{"id":72272,"date":"2023-05-10T02:34:58","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T06:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=72272"},"modified":"2023-05-22T21:01:55","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T01:01:55","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-39","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2023\/05\/10\/i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-39\/","title":{"rendered":"i arrogantly recommend&#8230; by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I arrogantly recommend&#8230;<\/strong> is a monthly column of unusual, overlooked, small press, and books in translation reviews by our friend, bibliophile, and retired ceiling tile inspector Tom Bowden, who tells us, &#8216;This platform allows me to exponentially increase the number of people reached who have no use for such things.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Links are provided to our Bookshop.org <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/shop\/bookbeat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">affiliate page<\/a>, our Backroom <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/bookshop\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gallery page<\/a>, or the book&#8217;s publisher. Bookshop.org is an alternative to Amazon that benefits indie bookstores nationwide. If you notice titles are unavailable online, please call and we&#8217;ll try to help. Read more arrogantly recommended reviews at:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?s=Tom+Bowden\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">I arrogantly recommend&#8230; <\/a><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/01_Wool.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-72273\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/01_Wool.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"189\" height=\"287\"><\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/1028\/9780811230070\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The English Understand Wool<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nHelen DeWitt<br \/>\nNew Directions<\/p>\n<p>This funny novella\u2014it\u2019s only 69 pages long\u2014reads like an homage to French Nobelist Patrick Madiano, who obsessively returns, in his own short novels, to a youth being raised by a shady couple more often absent than not and aloof when home. In the case of <strong>Wool<\/strong>, Helen DeWitt\u2019s heroine is a 17-year-old young woman trained and raised by her Maman to have impeccable taste in all matters and behaviors, and significant accomplishment as a pianist. The book\u2019s pivot: Returning to the hotel suite she and her mother have been sharing, she discovers the room empty of her mother\u2019s belongings but the police there. Maman and father are on the run: It seems that the couple who raised her are not her parents. Instead, they stole her as a baby at 18 months and somehow got hold of her $100 million fortune. And her real name is Marguerite. How Marguerite reacts to the news\u2014and the loss of her fortune\u2014says something unexpected but logical about being a person of wealth and taste.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Helen DeWitt\u2019s First Time\" width=\"635\" height=\"357\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4g6R1IOSy5k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>_________________________________________<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/02_White.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-72283\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/02_White.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"255\" height=\"365\"><\/a><strong>White Mythology<\/strong><br \/>\nW. D. Clarke<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/coronasamizdat.com\/index.php?id_product=60&amp;rewrite=white-mythology&amp;controller=product\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">corona\/samizdat<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Although <strong>White Mythology<\/strong> bills itself as \u201ca\u201d novel, it strikes me as really consisting of two novels about nutty things Caucasian guys do\u2014which is less ominous, perhaps, than a procrustean bed of questionable tendencies baked into a culture (its mythology), which would obtain had we only been given the first part and longest section of <strong>White Mythology<\/strong> called \u201cSkinner Boxed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSkinner Boxed\u201d concerns the unraveling of Dr. Ed, a psychiatrist who is spearheading trials of a new drug called Alba, and who\u2014more importantly\u2014believes that all human behavior reduces to chemical reactions provoked by external stimuli. Thus, what one takes as feelings or thoughts represent only conscious awareness of chemical reactions, hence the scare quotes around such words as \u201cfeelings\u201d or \u201cthoughts\u201d throughout the book. The implication of this notion is that the concept of free will is a species of nonsense, something Dr. Ed prefers not to consider.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Ed\u2019s crisis begins with his wife\u2019s absence from home and discovery that she may have surreptitiously been taking the trial drug, as has, it eventually turns out, his indispensable secretary. Revealing the implications of these facts would take this review into spoiler-alert territory. Suffice it to say that more alarming than these discoveries for Dr. Ed is the disappearance of one of his pilot-study patients and the appearance of her angry, distraught husband in Ed\u2019s offices. Things don\u2019t look well for the trial study, or for his marriage and perhaps even with the son whose existence Dr. Ed is uncomfortable acknowledging.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSkinner Boxed\u201d parodies the rationalist mindset that believes the only good life is one lead by strictly rational methods. What is wrong with that mindset is, implicit in Clarke\u2019s argument, that accumulating rational acts total not to a supreme rationality but to a supreme unreasonableness that is cruel, lifeless, and loveless.<\/p>\n<p>Part II, \u201cLove\u2019s Alchemy,\u201d concerns the rivalry between two brothers, as told by the younger, concerning individual identity, sexual appeal (they mix with each other\u2019s girlfriends), and willingness to break with parental authority. Has great descriptions of hockey fights and a game of capture the flag that includes the use of smoke bombs, bottle rockets, and M-80s. Color me jealous.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Interview with W. D. Clarke:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What riled you enough to write <em>White Mythology<\/em>, specifically \u201cSkinner Boxed\u201d? Potential perps are plentiful enough: psychiatry, scientific logic (scare quotes optional), marketplace values in human affairs, and so forth? Psychiatry would seem to be the place where human emotions are evaluated for chemical regulation by for-profit corporations. What\u2019s your beef with that?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Riled, eh? Yeah, I guess I was, a bit, then, haha! But that was back in 2001-04 or so, when I wrote <strong>White Mythology<\/strong>, and I assure you I am a much happier camper now\u2026 2004 is almost 20 years ago, too, beyond the statute of limitations of the Intentional Fallacy I expect, so anything that I do say here can be taken as reliably ex cathedra as from the Magic 8-Ball for sure, but I suppose that my earlier experience of the major postmodernists as well as Thomas Pynchon in grad school got me to thinking about reason along Weberian and Foucauldian lines.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">But it was really Peter Kramer\u2019s book Listening to Prozac that sparked everything for me with \u201cSkinner Boxed\u201d\u2014that, the legacy of the great \u201cIndustrial Novels\u201d (especially Dickens\u2019s Hard Times) and Derrida\u2019s \u201cWhite Mythology,\u201d of course\u2026 I suppose I was trying to write a \u201cpolitical\u201d novel without becoming too too tendentious about it, but I guess I did show my hand a bit in that meeting between Dr. Ed and the Alba\u2019s marketing team, when industry plans for future versions of the DSM (the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) come up in conversation\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>White Mythology<\/em> is labeled *a* novel, but as much as I like its two parts I don\u2019t see how they cohere. If anything, what unspoken principle lies behind the transition from the \u201cG-d\u201d of \u201cSkinner Boxed\u201d to the full spelling in \u201cLove\u2019s Alchemy\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Well, I wanted to try to explore if not comprehend what Derrida\u2019s \u201cPhallogocentrism\u201d generally and the essay \u201cWhite Mythology\u201d specifically still meant to me some years after being quite taken with it\u2014the idea that reason is always-already bound up in other (political, economic, cultural\u2026) \u201cnarratives,\u201d that at its base, reason is inseparable from figurative speech really fascinated me, and I suppose I was looking at different aspects of that problematic.<br \/>\nFor all of his supposed commitment to reason, the Dr. Ed of \u201cSkinner Boxed\u201d is as compelled to justify his experiences to himself by telling himself a very self-flattering \u201cstory\u201d as the characters of \u201cLove\u2019s Alchemy\u201d are to overshare their pet narratives with others\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">And to be even more pretentious about it, I\u2019d say that all of those narratives are bound up within and conditioned by late capitalism\u2019s reifying and commodifying logic. And one of the jobs of the novel\u2014not the only, certainly\u2014is to attempt to reveal or unveil what\u2019s unspoken of or naturalized about those tendencies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">It\u2019s no mistake that James Wood intended a pejorative when he labeled fiction that traces its line back to Dickens as \u201cHysterical Realism\u201d (somehow uniting such diverse writers as Don DeLillo and Zadie Smith, among others), since in his view the novel should never attempt to do anything like I just described: its sole provenance is social and psychological realism in his view, with I think Henry James being the ideal practitioner of all that. Well, I simply disagree, and instead of arguing about it here I\u2019ll point your readers to the website of the late, great, but underappreciated writer Edmond Caldwell, contrajameswood.blogspot.com \u2013a passion project which was also a tour de force in my opinion (it\u2019s all in the site name!)<\/p>\n<p><strong>I\u2019m wondering if you have any anecdotes about some real-life Dr. Eds you may have met, and in what context? What is it that you think these hyper-rationalists miss, and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">To steal a line from Milan Kundera\u2019s novel <strong>Immortality<\/strong>, I\u2019d been thinking about Dr. Ed for years, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever met him, really. Not with his specific cluster of \u2026 issues, I suppose, especially the rationalism mixed with the repressed romanticism. But hyper-rationalists in general, sure! I started off in Engineering Physics, then moved to Philosophy (and English Lit), and in the first two of those fields, it\u2019s kinda hard to miss \u2019em. One favorite physics professor purchased at least five identical suits, and so over the three years I took his courses I never saw him in anything else, and I found it most endearing: he had bigger fish to fry (superconductivity!) than deciding what to wear to work each day!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">But Dr. Ed didn\u2019t crystallize for me until I\u2019d lived a little and learned through experience to empathize a bit more with someone who\u2019d lost something massive like that\u2014a child was stolen from him!\u2014causing him to rather violently wall off his life from the possibility of any future loss or grief. I do empathize with him, as much as I make fun of him. I have little empathy though for the narrator, who quite smugly sees himself (and it\u2019s definitely a he) above and beyond Dr. Ed\u2019s mere station in life. The narrator is the kind of narrator who imagines he\u2019s got the whole world sussed, in fact, and has somehow earned the right to complete, third-person omniscience\u2014as if it were still the nineteenth-century novel\u2019s heyday! So, I must confess to still hating that guy, whoever he is, all these years later\u2026.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I love your description in \u201cLove\u2019s Alchemy\u201d of the game of capture the flag that includes the use of smoke bombs, bottle rockets, and M-80s. I\u2019m hoping you can tell me about an actual event this was based on, or is it just a long-cherished fantasy of an ideal battle?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">My brother and I actually did nearly incinerate the entire town of Duxbury one particularly dry late summer\u2019s day, but luckily, we got to a fire extinguisher before the fire consumed more than a third of our neighbor\u2019s treed front \u201cyard.\u201d But the game itself is a somewhat rococo elaboration and variation upon a game a 12-year-old friend of mine invented, when I was nine, for a blacked-out basement rec room, in which a lone sheriff comes down the stairs with a cap pistol seeking out a half-dozen hidden baddies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The problems of <em>White Mythology\u2019s<\/em> two parts are opposed: In \u201cSkinner Boxed,\u201d Dr. Ed\u2019s problems stem in large part from his lack of empathy for others; whereas in \u201cLove\u2019s Alchemy\u201d they stem from the brothers\u2019 rivalry with each other\u2014they\u2019re too close. What aspects of human experience do you feel most compelled to explore?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I guess\u2014to extend a bit more of what I said above\u2014I like to explore situations that can resolve themselves in more than one direction, and be myself surprised when they go one way rather than the other (in Zadie Smith\u2019s terminology, I am the opposite of the novelistic \u201cmicro-planner,\u201d a \u201cseat-of-the-pantser\u201d): In the middle of and again towards the end of \u201cSkinner Boxed,\u201d Dr. Ed is presented with crossroads or possible teachable moments where he could choose to move towards either a rediscovered sense of empathy or back to his protective shell\/dehumanizing comfort zone, for example.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I also like to explore self-narratives of Sartrean \u201cbad faith\u201d or \u201cinauthenticity,\u201d how we can lie to others and especially ourselves to keep that ol\u2019 self-esteem machine humming, like pretty much everyone in \u201cLove\u2019s Alchemy.\u201d There\u2019s not much of the \u201cpromised\u201d alchemy in that story, though\u2014or love for that matter, except in the two teenaged boys\u2019, Victor and Gerald\u2019s, mutual self-regard, and much of the quoted love poem (John Donne\u2019s \u201cThe Ecstasie\u201d) comes in their sections (the title poem is also from Donne, but though it rather cynically denies the very possibility of love, it\u2019s not quoted in the story). But love, and other-centered behavior generally, what the Earl of Shaftesbury, I think, called our natural (if not always expressed) propensity toward benevolence, remains a possibility at the margins of everyone\u2019s consciousness (Gerald even toys with it at the beginning of the story, when he realizes how much he admires his teacher and what he is learning from her, but then decides to poison her plants anyway), even if this particular set of bad faithers choose to listen to and \u201cpropagate\u201d a different story\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>While humor can tell truths just as well as drama, the choice of humor rather than drama is one the artist makes. Why the rhetoric of humor?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I\u2019m a big fan of Milan Kundera, both of his fiction and of his reflections upon the art and history of the novel. In <em>Testaments Betrayed<\/em>, his second of such books, he states (quoting Octavio Paz):<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">\u201cThere is no humor in Homer or Virgil; Ariosto seems to foreshadow it, but not until Cervantes does humor take shape. . . . Humor,&#8221; he goes on, &#8220;is the great invention of the modern spirit.&#8221; A fundamental idea: humor is not an age-old human practice; it is an invention bound up with the birth of the novel. Thus humor is not laughter, not mockery, not satire, but a particular species of the comic, which, Paz says (and this is the key to understanding humor&#8217;s essence), &#8220;renders ambiguous everything it touches.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">So, I guess I am a big fan of such ambiguity, moral and otherwise, like when laughter is not mockery but is mingled with \u201can almost marveling affection\u201d (Kundera again), and this above all: judgment is suspended and the reader is left thinking about how much he or she resembles Don Quixote or Uncle Toby\u2014or Oedipa Maas or Kundera\u2019s own Tereza and Tomas, for example. For it is that great tradition of high unseriousness which runs from Cervantes and Sterne on through to Musil and Pynchon and Kundera, etc., which for me is just an unending source of delight and inspiration.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">And to quote Kundera once more:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 80px;\">Humor: the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others; humor: the intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange pleasure that conies of the certainty that there is no certainty.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What are you currently working on?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I am in the Interminable Editing stage of a much longer novel (of 220k or so words) about the separate journeys a father and his two adult sons make over the course of the day to meet up at a gun rights rally in small town in Ontario. The father is ex-police, ex-military and is full of regret and anger at his two boys, both massive screw-ups, even as he should be elated that his \u201cMovement,\u201d which he started four years ago, is finally gaining mainstream attention. (I began writing it in 2018, long before the so-called \u201ctrucker\u2019s convoy\u201d we were recently besieged with up here in Canada, but as always seems to be the case, history simply overtook me.) It\u2019s called Take Your Guns to Town and it\u2019ll hopefully be ready sometime later this year.<br \/>\n_________________________________________<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/03_Well.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-72274\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/03_Well.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"264\" height=\"364\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/1028\/9781737277569\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Seriously Well<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\nHelge Torvund<br \/>\nThe Song Cave<\/p>\n<p>This book-length poem considers the joys of reading, creating, and living\u2014with a recently discovered tumor. Seriously Well is avowedly joyful and appreciative of the \u201cenigmatic art\u201d of writing\u2014\u201csigns \/ resembling tiny insects,\u201d that \u201ccan make the outer world \/ and the inner imagination \/ meet.\u201d Writing allows us<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">To be in contact<br \/>\nwith another human being\u2019s<br \/>\nmind, visions and feelings<br \/>\nthrough letters.<br \/>\nAs if a letter<br \/>\nwas a magic wand.<br \/>\nPerhaps<br \/>\nthe enigmatic in this<br \/>\nis what keeps me<br \/>\ngoing.<br \/>\nThe feeling that such<br \/>\nan almost impossible thing<br \/>\nreally can happen.<br \/>\nThat by using the language<br \/>\nin a certain way,<br \/>\nyou can establish some kind of<br \/>\ndirect contact<br \/>\nbetween that which is existing<br \/>\nin you and that which exists<br \/>\nin another person.<\/p>\n<p>A more laudatory appreciation of literature\u2019s work I can\u2019t imagine. But its admirable achievements are tempered by the fact that, alas, we don\u2019t have world enough and time to explore them all: Time enters into the picture, forcing us to realize the limited period we are granted to appreciate creation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I suddenly became<br \/>\ncompletely aware of<br \/>\nthe fact<br \/>\nthat Death always walks by my side.<br \/>\nI stretched out my hand.<br \/>\nI said: OK; so there you are then.<br \/>\nI might as well shake hands with you,<br \/>\nand accept that you are here.<br \/>\nIn this way I included Death in my life.<\/p>\n<p>The gift of creation, in <strong>Seriously Well<\/strong>, is represented by a jazz pianist\u2019s improvisation:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Now.<br \/>\nThis is the moment.<br \/>\nWhen your fingertips<br \/>\nmeet the keys<br \/>\nnobody knows what<br \/>\nis going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s crucial to point out that, in the moment of creation, \u201cnobody\u201d\u2014including the pianist\u2014&#8221;knows what \/ is going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">You put your fingers down<br \/>\nand the world is black and white.<br \/>\nAnd from the black and white<br \/>\nyou start to create<br \/>\ncolors.<br \/>\nAll the sounds<br \/>\nall the tone colors<br \/>\nfrom green to blue<br \/>\nand from grey to<br \/>\nyellow.<\/p>\n<p>Then, in light of these boundless enthusiasms of color, the diagnosis of a tumor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">A feeling that told me<br \/>\nthat when it is darkening around the heart,<br \/>\nand the time is shrinking,<br \/>\nyou have to embrace the fear<br \/>\nand give yourself over<br \/>\nto an insane confidence.<\/p>\n<p>A beautiful, sustained meditation on the life-enriching and -affirming places where \u201cthe outer world \/ and the inner imagination \/ meet.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/04_Tract.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-72275\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/04_Tract.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"259\" height=\"362\"><\/a><strong>Tractatus<\/strong><br \/>\nR\u00f3bert G\u00e1l \/ David Short<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/schismpress.tumblr.com\/SCHISM2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Schism Press<\/a><\/p>\n<p>R\u00f3bert G\u00e1l\u2019s most recent book of aphorisms, deftly translated by David Short, are, as usual for G\u00e1l, simultaneously philosophical and playful, aimed more at thinking about the problems of existence than offering solutions to them. I\u2019ve chosen a few of his longer passages to exemplify his thoughts\u2019 movements.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">3.5 Not everything that is valued is of value, but that, too, changes over time. If the awareness of a value is to be entirely subjective, then ultimately the subject itself is that value, and that applies equally to an object in relation to the objectivity of what is objective. This is a kind of conceptual game, where the part is delineated vis-\u00e0-vis the whole and vice versa. What is primary is the point of departure, the point when the mirror is cast, the mirror being at the same time a boomerang. Its three-dimensional distancing and subsequent approaching are inherently linked to an image that is larger, then smaller, then larger again, though it is only two-dimensional. The value of an image resides in the fact that the missing dimension becomes the dominant one and our subjective decision-making becomes decision-making as to the nature of its objectivity. We may see what is objectively dissimilar as subjectively identical and vice versa. And the more convincing this illusion, the more valuable will also be that which we value\u2014and the value is set.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">4.1 Beginnings are beautiful for that which they close off: that to which it is suddenly possible to return only as a matter of single-mindedness or a miracle. Imagine, say, a picture, which, leant back against a wall for years, has never said anything to us, then out of the blue it takes the floor to recount the story depicted in it. A story to which we have so far been blind, because it has been part of another story being played out inside us, and we have laid claim to it, resolved to lay such a claim. But suddenly something snaps. Our resolve fails. A previously unknown story starts speaking in its own tongue, which we instantly understand. At that moment we are ready to accept its message, pick the picture up and place it somewhere where it will stand guard over our dream of an encounter between miracle and resolve.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">6.1 Enthusiasm is frequently more important than truth, but, just like a truth, it\u2019s either mine or thine, which leads into the problem of its transmissibility. Communicating enthusiasm is, then, an ambivalent act with the side effect of a disgust similar to the disgust that we get from a truth that, for whatever reason, we haven\u2019t needed to know.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoy G\u00e1l\u2019s method of looking at the words comprising an idea and taking their meaning and intent to their often-ironic logical conclusions. Philosophy\u2019s methods of generating questions about problems and results, in G\u00e1l\u2019s hands, leads to curious insights regarding human existence.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Words.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-72248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Words.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"125\" height=\"200\"><\/a><strong>Words<\/strong><br \/>\nHelena \u00d6sterland \/ Paul Cunningham<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oomphpress.com\/words-from-words-and-colors-by-helena-osterlund\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OOMPH! Press<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Helena \u00d6sterland is a Swedish writer whose first book in 2010 won the Bor\u00e5s Magazine Debut Award. This newer book, Words, consists of three poems\/sections\u2014\u201cWas,\u201d \u201cIs,\u201d and \u201cWill\u201d\u2014written in minimalist, incantatory cadences that are rhythmic and hypnotic. The spare vocabulary is repetitious in the manner of a toddler, say, coming to recognize itself as distinct from the world but with a limited number of words learned so far. In more highfalutin terms, imagine Gertrude Stein\u2019s permutations of monosyllabic words mixed with Descartes\u2019 Latin concision (\u201ccogito, ergo sum\u201d) about himself in relation to the world, pared down to its roots in the senses, primarily sight, where sensation equals knowledge. In the case of <strong>Words<\/strong> the pared-down world is one mainly of frozen solitude among snow and ice.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I said the word<br \/>\nSnow<br \/>\nI said the word<br \/>\nI had a voice<br \/>\nIt was not silent<br \/>\nIt was not white<br \/>\nIt was not wet<br \/>\nThe voice was a voice<br \/>\nI was not the voice<br \/>\nI had the voice<br \/>\nAnd I believed in it.<\/p>\n<p>The middle part, \u201cIs,\u201d slowly builds upon what it is to \u201cknow\u201d something, including oneself by introducing another creature\u2014a raven\u2014to react to in a way that seems to allude to Wallace Stevens\u2019s \u201c13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">It is white light<br \/>\nAnd the grass is white light<br \/>\nAnd the grass moves<br \/>\nI ofe in the light<br \/>\nI am in the light<br \/>\nI move in the light<br \/>\nAnd move until I stop<br \/>\nAnd I stop<br \/>\nI see that there is something<br \/>\nAnd it is not white light<br \/>\nIt is something<br \/>\nIt stands in the white grass<br \/>\nAnd it is black<br \/>\nIt stands in the light<br \/>\nIt is in the light<br \/>\nBut it is not light<br \/>\nI see there is Light<br \/>\nBut it is black<br \/>\nI see that it is black<br \/>\nI know the word for it<br \/>\nI see that it is something with eyes<br \/>\nI see that it is something with black eyes<br \/>\nI don\u2019t know what it is<br \/>\nBut I see the eyes seeing<br \/>\nI don\u2019t see what they see<br \/>\nBut I see the eyes seeing<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t know what they see<br \/>\nBut I see that it is a raven<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u2014a raven whose eyes the narrator eventually crushes.<\/p>\n<p>But in the last part, \u201cWill,\u201d the narrator sees a (white) fish but tells himself to leave its eyes (and body) alone, leaving us with a contrast in attitudes between forces of light and dark, of innocence and experience. The entirety of <strong>Words<\/strong> can be seen as an alternative Genesis, in which words create relationships among other words, our knowledge of them and of ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Paul Cunningham\u2019s translation does well at translating \u00d6sterlund\u2019s rhythms and cadences into rhythmic cadences of idiomatic English.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/06_Alindarka.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-72277\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/06_Alindarka.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"229\" height=\"353\"><\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/1028\/9780811231961\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alindarka\u2019s Children (Things Will Be Bad)<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nAlhierd Bacharevic \/ Jim Dingley &amp; Petra Reid<br \/>\nNew Directions<\/p>\n<p>The real-life counterparts of the unnamed nations in Alindarka\u2019s Children are Russia and Belarus, in which Belarus is dominated by Russian forces to eliminate all traces of Belarussian culture, history, and language. To capture some of that tension, translators Jim Dingley and Petra Reid have substituted English (for the Russians) and Scots (for the Belarussians). The Sctos language is just unfamiliar enough for English readers to imitate Russian disorientation in the face of a strong dialect. In Alindarka\u2019s Children, the Russian language is referred to as \u201cthe Lingo\u201d and Belarussian as \u201cthe Leid.\u201d The Leid is under siege and its use is forbidden. Children who speak the Leid are sent to a prison camp where a doctor works who has a \u201ctheory\u201d about a bone deep in the larynx that prevents children from speaking the Lingo without an accent. Surgery is occasionally required to remove this \u201cbone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The doctor believes that if a spoken language is unclear, then so are thoughts the words are meant to express. Not surprisingly, he has an urge to test his theory on Alicia whose allure for him is simultaneously sexual, predatory, and sadistic; an allure driven in part by Alicia as representative of the ethnic, erotic, and exotic other and in part as a transgressive (for him) hetero assertion of dominance.<\/p>\n<p>As the novel begins, two children, Alicia and Avi, are kidnapped away from the camp by their father and his girlfriend. The father is an absolute stickler for the Leid, refusing to allow the children to speak the Lingo at home and at school, too. The Scottish takes a bit getting used to but sounds English spoken with a broad accent. Songs permeate every page of the novel, like an excessively engaged Greek chorus but whose statements don\u2019t always make immediate sense in the context of the story at any given point but which become clearer as the book goes on. (The book provides a glossary at the end along with keywords defined at the bottom of the page.)<\/p>\n<p>The children\u2019s father (\u201cFaither,\u201d in Scots), who lost his legal parenting rights over language issues, quickly turns out to be dangerously inept and manages to lose the children after stopping briefly to stretch their legs. Faither is alone in his mission to preserve his language and to use his children to both preserve the Leid and refuse to learn or speak the Lingo, even if it will make employment and citizenship easier withing his own country. Avi and Alicia\u2014who seem much better off without him and his even cluelesser girlfriend\u2014are surprisingly resourceful and resilient for being lost in the middle of nowhere. Faither eventually loses his girlfriend and job, too. The children\u2019s mother left Faither long ago over his obsession with the Leid.<\/p>\n<p>Alicia and Avi spend the rest of the novel on the lam, negotiating their way among the perils posed by various adults, almost all of whom demonstrate themselves to be hostile toward the children, even if they, too, like the children, are native Leid speakers. What their fate might be, the novel explores, with compassion, humor, and seriousness.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/07_Anthology-A.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-72284\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/07_Anthology-A.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"245\" height=\"324\"><\/a><strong>The Economy Magazine Anthology, Vols. 1-7<\/strong><br \/>\nFanny Howe, Douglas Kearney, Michael Robbins, Rae Armantrout, Ange Mlinko, and others<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/theeconomypress.com\/THE-ECONOMY-MAGAZINE-ANTHOLOGY-volumes-one-through-seven\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Economy Press<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>The Economy Magazine<\/em> was an online literary journal that ran from 2012-2015,\u201d says the back of each volume, and collected here are the poems that ran. The lineup of poets is impressive, as are the range of moods and methods covered, from the mournful to the droll. As a whole, the Anthology makes for a nice introduction to 20 or so contemporary poets\u2014and the design and presentation of the poems also make a good excuse for buying the collection.<\/p>\n<p>Unrepresentative as it is, I\u2019ll let the spirit\u2014the humor and existential exhaustion\u2014of the anthology find expression in these lines from Michael Robbins\u2019s \u201cTo Anthony Madrid\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Distant is our exit, unmoving the traffic;<br \/>\nuseful are the implements of a trade;<br \/>\nmovies in 3D are intolerable. . .<br \/>\nLong the line for coffee, great my need;<br \/>\nthe shaven adepts set their gods in grain;<br \/>\nno right turn on red.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/08_Tideline.webp\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-72279\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/08_Tideline.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"215\" height=\"287\"><\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/1028\/9781938890888\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tideline<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nKrystyna Dabrowska \/ Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Mira Rosenthal<br \/>\nZephyr Press<\/p>\n<p>Tideline marks the English language debut of Polish poet Krystyna Dabrowska, admirably translated here by Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Mira Rosenthal. Dabrowska also won the inaugural Wislawa Szymborska Award (named after the Nobel poet), and one can see similarities in the both authors\u2019 choices of everyday occurrences and objects as topics and their abilities to twist simple language to help us see anew the moral and ethical constraints of common lives. Here are some lines from the poem \u201cSiblings\u201d that demonstrate Dabrowska\u2019s ability to transform an increasingly bizarre situation into one man\u2019s painfully beautiful homage to his deceased sister:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">An aged woman dances flamenco.<br \/>\nIn her effort a former lightness smolders.<br \/>\nShe is tall and slender like a humpbacked heron,<br \/>\nher skirt has frills and ruffles, her cheeks are sunken.<br \/>\nThis aged woman dances like she\u2019s still young,<br \/>\na girl who perished during wartime.<br \/>\nAfter the show she wipes off the make-up, takes off the wig<br \/>\nand dress, then puts on pants and a jacket<br \/>\nand becomes the person she is off stage:<br \/>\na male\u2014the dead girl\u2019s brother. . . .<br \/>\nBefore the war, they travelled through Europe,<br \/>\na celebrated teenage dancing couple.<br \/>\nThen came the ghetto, escape, separation.<br \/>\nHe told himself that if he survived<br \/>\nit was only to become her embodiment in dance. . . .<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/09_Euler.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-72280\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/09_Euler.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"314\"><\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/1028\/9780691191379\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Euler\u2019s Gem: The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nDavid S. Richeson<br \/>\nPrinceton Science Library \/ Princeton University Press<\/p>\n<p>For some decades now, the Princeton Science Library has reprinted paperbacks in mathematics and the sciences\u2014from astronomy to zoology\u2014written for general audiences possessed of a high school education, a sense of curiosity, and the patience work through the occasional tough spot. Mathematics was never my thang, and I declined to enroll in calculus my senior year in high school. A few years later, when I discovered Martin Gardner\u2019s math games column in Scientific American, I realized how fascinating and\u2014yes\u2014cool mathematics can be in their implications, use, and elegance.<\/p>\n<p>In <strong>Euler\u2019s Gem<\/strong>, David S. Richeson, Professor Mathematics at Dickinson College, explains the implications and applications of just one of Leonhard Euler\u2019s many theorems, this regarding just three properties of solid geometric shapes\u2014their faces (surfaces), edges (along which the faces connect), and vertices (the point where two or more edges connect). Oddly enough, no other mathematician or philosopher before Euler had considered edges as a property of polyhedra. The simple recognition that shapes have edges allowed for the insight that V \u2013 E + F = 2 in the case of geometric solids with stiff surfaces but equals 0 in the case of such topographic solids as the donut-shaped torus. Richeson demonstrates\u2014with plenty of examples that allow readers to prove to themselves the truth of the mathematical claims\u2014why, how, and where Euler\u2019s theorem works.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Euler\u2019s Gem <\/strong>is more than a series of mathematical factoids. Richeson brings in historical and biographical background to the discoveries made by Euler and other mathematicians to illustrate the human personalities and motivations behind both the discoveries and the errors made over the centuries. (Negative results can present a lot to learn from.) We learn about the history of geometry, its discoveries, proofs, insights, and assumptions\u2014all just by answering the \u201cso what\u201d? behind knowing that V \u2013 E + F = 2. These include implications for structures at the micro- and macroscopic levels\u2014from the potential shapes of atomic molecules to graph theory; from the invention of topology (by Euler as a result of settling a debate within a town bisected by a river and island, across both of which were seven bridges, if it were possible to cross each bridge only once) to why the four-color conjecture for planar graphs is true (the conjecture stating that maps may be drawn of multiple countries sharing a border using no more than four colors to distinguish the countries from each other); from determining the area of oddly shaped plots of land, to \u201cprime knots with 16 . . . crossings\u201d (!); and more. Appendix A includes a variety of complex shapes that readers are encouraged to (photo)copy so they can demonstrate for themselves several principles covered in the book. Recommended.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/10_No-More.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-72281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/10_No-More.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" height=\"285\"><\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/1028\/9781644212394\">No More \/ C\u2019est Tout<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nMarguerite Duras \/ Richard Howard<br \/>\nSeven Stories Press<\/p>\n<p>During the last year or so of her life, Marguerite Duras dictated to her young lover, Yann Steiner, her final thoughts. Terser than her usual writing, <strong>No More<\/strong> nonetheless conveys Duras\u2019s spirit, showing that remaining intact are also her instincts for all-consuming passion and the blunt, unapologetic observation:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Your kisses\u2014I\u2019ll believe in them to<br \/>\nthe end of my life.<br \/>\nTill we meet again.<br \/>\nAgain to no one. Not even to<br \/>\nyou.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s over.<br \/>\nThere\u2019s nothing.<br \/>\nEnd the page.<br \/>\nCome now.<br \/>\nWe must be going.<\/p>\n<p>Duras\u2019s repetition of key phrases reminds me of Williams Burroughs\u2019s <strong>Last Words<\/strong>, which also, like Duras\u2019s <strong>No More<\/strong>, ends with an affirmation of love.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Richard Howard\u2019s typically fine translation is Christiane Blot-Labareere\u2019s essay, which situates <strong>No More<\/strong> within Duras\u2019s oeuvre.<\/p>\n<p>Watch a 1985 interview with Marguerite Duras: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/TPiv0EKzd8k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Worn Out With Desire To Write<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I arrogantly recommend&hellip; is a monthly column of unusual, overlooked, small press, and books in translation reviews by our friend, bibliophile, and retired ceiling tile inspector Tom Bowden, who tells us, &lsquo;This platform allows me to exponentially increase the number of people reached who have no use for such things.&rsquo; Links are provided to our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[762,65],"tags":[466,461],"class_list":["post-72272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature-reviews","category-world-lit","tag-i-arrogantly-recommend","tag-tom-bowden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}